Nokia and Samsung sign patent licence agreement extension

Nokia and Samsung have extended a patent license agreement for a further five years with the binding agreement lasting until 1 January 2019 as a result.

The terms of the contract means that Samsung will pay additional compensation to Nokia from 1 January 2014 onwards with the final amount being agreed upon in a binding arbitration that will be reached at some point in 2015.

"This extension and agreement to arbitrate represent a hallmark of constructive resolution of licensing disputes, and are expected to save significant transaction costs for both parties", said Paul Melin, Chief Intellectual Property Officer of Nokia.

Financial details have not been disclosed due to the strict NDAs in place and backs up the strength that Nokia’s patent division has even though the devices part of the company has been sold.

Samsung is already in hot water when it comes to Nokia as it illegally made confidential documents public that detailed a patent licensing deal between Apple and Nokia.

The deal comes hot on the heels of another Samsung patent dispute that saw an Apple and Microsoft-backed Rockstar Consortium suing Samsung, as well as Google, over Nortel patents that Rockstar owns.

Samsung also announced in the middle of October that it has decided to abandon filing patent lawsuits for five years in the European Union [EU] in order to avoid being levied with a multi-billion pound fine for exploiting the system in Europe.

In that case it has been accused of using standard essential patents [SEPs] to bring anti-trust cases against Apple with the European Commission [EC] launching an investigation into Samsung’s patent practices back in January 2012.